


on staying young (a story from district 7)

by everythingFangirl



Series: when I'm with you, I can only be me (stories from the victors' tower) [11]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Lunch Club, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Friendship, Gen, and as i always say, time is an illusion folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24446278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingFangirl/pseuds/everythingFangirl
Summary: “You still haven’t picked a name?”“No. I… I guess I just don’t like to think about it. I’ll come up with something if it does happen.”“Like a pun?”“Yeah, probably.” Charlie's chuckle seems forced.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: when I'm with you, I can only be me (stories from the victors' tower) [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1715008
Comments: 20
Kudos: 82
Collections: victors' tower canon works





	on staying young (a story from district 7)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WreakingHavok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WreakingHavok/gifts).



> I am still going. Longest work in the series so far, pog! Thank you so much to the floories gang, you're an inspiration, ily

Nate is twelve years old, and he’s scared. 

Their little group of five is making their way towards the town square, where the stage has been set up in front of the Justice Building. Where the Capitol officials and the Peacekeepers will be waiting, where the name of a child will be picked, where for the first time, his own name will be in that glass bowl. The thought is terrifying.

“You have the dice, right?” Zach asks from beside him. Nate just nods, unable to speak, hand moving to his pocket where the little wooden cube sits. Its lightness doesn’t match the weight of the promises tied to it. 

Up on the stage, next to the mayor with his worn suit, stand the escort with barbed wire in his suit and the color of blood in his hair, the mentor with wings on her back and the mask on her face. They look so alien, so foreign, like some creatures out of a fairytale or the dolls Nate sometimes glimpses through shop windows. Rows and rows of Peacekeepers surround them, faceless under their helmets. 

Nate’s shaking, and he doesn’t even realize it until Charlie takes his hand. 

“We’re gonna be okay, yeah?” His grip is steady, reassuring, but despite his smile Nate doesn’t miss the hint of fear in his eyes.

Nate inhales, steels himself. “Yeah.” 

He squeezes his hand, reaches the other out to Zach to his right, sees Charlie do the same to his left. Soon they’re all linked, hand-in-hand, one unit. Like this, Nate can almost believe that they can’t be broken apart, they won’t be, he can’t let them be.

The escort reaches his hand into the bowl, draws out a slip. Nate’s eyes follow the movement. Hundreds of pairs of eyes follow the movement on the stage, thousands more on the screens. 

The escort raises it up, unfolds the piece of paper with a dramatic flourish.

Every single child in that square is holding their breath. 

“Lance Cross!” 

...It’s not one of them. 

Someone moves in the crowd, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not one of them. 

It’s not one of them, he repeats to himself. 

Zach slowly lets go of his hand. So do the others, whispering among themselves. In his relief, Nate is barely even aware that he’s still holding on to Charlie.

His friend grins at him. “See? We did it!” The anthem blares around them.

Nate tries his best to smile back, his heart still beating at the speed of a hummingbird’s. 

They did it. They did it. 

One down.

~

Nate is thirteen. The walk to the square is tense, a small stream of conversation doing its best to keep the terror at bay.

“If you are going to get picked, what name would you choose?”

“I wanna be... Grizzly.”

“Like the bear?”

“Yeah! They’re big and they’re strong, it’s a scary name!”

“That’s dumb.”

“But they're cool!”

Same stage, same escort, same bowl. Another slip of paper, another name. Charlie grips his hand again as the tension builds and builds to a breaking point.

“Suzanna Fowler!”

A collective sigh of relief, except for one in the crowd. Their chain of hands unlinks once again. 

“We’re okay,” Charlie mutters, and Nate can’t tell if it’s to them or himself.

~

Grizzly is fourteen. 

“...what?”

“Condifiction.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It’s, like, you know-”

“That doesn’t even mean anything.”

“Just listen to me, I’ll explain it! Okay, so -”

Escort, bowl, slip. The square holds its breath. 

“Linda Nelson!” 

They let go, and Zach rubs his hand where Grizzly had squeezed it tight enough to be painful.

~

Grizzly is fifteen. 

“You can’t do that! You’re just copying my name!”

“What do you mean?”

“Bizly is just Grizzly but with one letter changed! You’re copying me!”

“No I’m not! It’s got one Z instead of two, as well!” 

“...that still doesn’t mean you’re not copying me.”

“He’s right man, that’s _bear_ -ly even different.”

“Shut up, Charlie.” He only laughs in response.

Escort, bowl, slip. Grizzly hears the rushing of blood in his ears. 

“Emmanuel Layton!”

Condi exhales sharply beside him when they let go, gives him a small smile. It’s easier, every time, to start to breathe again.

~

Grizzly is sixteen.

“There’s no way you’re picking that as your name.”

“I couldn’t think of anything else though! This is my best idea!”

“Wheatie was your best idea?”

“...yeah!”

“You can’t get any sponsors with a name like Wheatie!”

“The name doesn’t mean everything, dude.”

“Maybe going against the _grain_ will even get you some more points.”

“I can’t fucking believe this.”

Escort, bowl, slip. Sweat dripping down his neck. 

“Terra Warner!”

Wheatie smiles at them when they turn to leave, suggests dinner at his house. It’s almost enough to believe there was no danger in the first place.

~

Grizzly is seventeen.

“You still haven’t picked a name?”

“No. I… I guess I just don’t like to think about it. I’ll come up with something if it does happen.”

“Like a pun?”

“Yeah, probably.” His chuckle seems forced. 

Escort, slip, bowl. The fear echoes in his mind and he forces it down, because they’ll be okay, this is just like every other time -

“Charles Dalgleish!”

And the world screeches to a halt.

No. 

No no no no no

No no no not this not now please not this no 

For an infinite moment, everything stands still. But then the others around them turn their gazes to Charlie, start murmuring, the Peacekeepers start moving towards them, and Grizzly can’t breathe.

As if in a daze, Charlie steps forward, letting go of their hands and walking towards the stage, ripping a hole in their chain, their group, their little family, and Grizzly’s hand feels so cold, the space where he used to stand so empty. Condi reaches a hand across the gap and Grizzly grabs for it desperately, holds on like a lifeline, because he thinks he might collapse if he doesn’t. It already feels like a betrayal.

Charlie’s up on the stage and his eyes find Grizzly’s in the crowd, wide and fearful and it breaks his heart to see him like this. 

The escort asks for volunteers. Bizly's hand is trembling, Condi is digging his nails into Grizzly’s palm, and he has to physically clench his jaw shut to prevent the shout from escaping from his throat when Charlie swallows and gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. It hurts, it hurts, but then the moment has passed and there’s nothing they can do, there’s nothing else they can do as Charlie shakes the man’s hand and the anthem of Panem blares and his best friend stares terrified over the crowd. 

They give him an hour. His family takes the bulk of it. It takes some convincing to let the Peacekeepers let the four of them inside at the same time, but they do.

And Charlie, who always has a smile on his face and a joke on his lips and a comforting hand to any of them who may need it, who’s always been there, his chaos a universal constant, sits pale-faced and silent on the velvet couch. He already looks so far away, as if, as if he already thinks he’s - 

No. He can’t. He won’t. 

They rush forward, and Charlie barely has time to turn towards them before they’ve swallowed him into a group hug, and Grizzly can’t tell who’s the one crying, or maybe it’s all of them. 

They eventually sit down in an awkward configuration, some of them squeezed onto the couch and some on the floor, and for the first time since he can remember, there’s nothing to say. Condi slowly digs the die from his pocket, drops it into Charlie’s palm, and he holds it like it might shatter, like it’s made of diamond.

“You better bring that back,” Condi finally says. 

There’s a beat of silence. “I’ll try.” Any hint of laughter is gone from Charlie’s voice, and Grizzly’s heart aches.

“...and you didn’t even pick a name,” Bizly says half-heartedly. 

“I’ll think of something. I always do.” Charlie’s smile is fleeting, but when his gaze meets Grizzly’s, something in his eyes changes. He straightens his spine, exhales, and Grizzly can see something of his old self return to him. “It’s a _dice_ -y situation, but I’ll pull through.” 

There’s a smattering of laughter. Grizzly can’t even bring himself to complain about the pun. It’s the last of his friend he’ll have for a long while ~~because it can’t be the last, it can’t be~~.

Watching the train leave the station is the worst thing in the world.

~

Grizzly is eighteen. 

No words are spoken as they walk towards the square. Four of them. 

The last year. The last time.

Moving through the crowd, Grizzly scans the stage, the screens, for any glimpse of his friend, desperately looking to see his face in person. It’s been almost a year. It’s been far too long. 

And then he does. Charlie’s on the wrong side of the barriers now, the wrong side of the cameras. The green makes him look sick. Or maybe that’s his posture, his clenched fists, the sheen of sweat on his brow, the way his gaze nervously flits across the crowd. He doesn’t look like himself, and it hurts.

The escort introduces him as Slimecicle, and Grizzly grimaces at the way Charlie almost flinches when he hears it. 

Grizzly’s holding Wheatie's hand instead of Charlie’s and it feels wrong, with him standing on that stage looking down at them, but he doesn’t think he can physically let go now.

And Charlie finally meets his eyes. 

There’s no way he can convey everything he wants to say in one look, but he tries, raises his chin, gives him a slight nod, a small smile. 

Charlie nods back, the ghost of a smile on his own face. 

Escort. Bowl. Slip.

He holds his breath.

The name called doesn’t matter. It doesn’t belong to any of them. 

There’s a collective exhale of relief among the eighteen-year-olds. The realization hits Grizzly at the same time as everyone else: he’s free. He made it. 

Nate looks around at his friends, who all look like they’ve snapped out of a daze. Zach squeezes his hand once before letting go, Condi looks at him and starts to grin - 

Charlie is still looking at them from the stage. So much of the tension is gone from his posture. He just looks tired, now. He spares them a small smile, only for a second, before turning to the child who’s climbed onto the stage.

It’s over. Just like that.

When the others disperse to go back to the woods or the workshops because even on this day the work doesn’t really stop, Nate instead moves against the flow of the crowd and towards the stage, the building behind it. He’s been looking for work in the Justice Building for close to a year. Today was the only reason why. 

Inside, it’s so much quieter, among the brightly lit corridors and the rooms stocked with expensive mahogany furniture that he rushes past without a second look. He passes the mayor, a weeping woman who must be the tribute’s family, almost runs into a Peacekeeper - 

And the man walking a few feet ahead of them, green suit, brown hair, glasses - 

They freeze simultaneously. 

The Peacekeeper turns towards Nate, hand reaching for their weapon, but a single motion from Charlie has them standing down and moving out of the way. 

Nate looks at him up close, taking in the differences. The tired eyes, the too-perfect hair, the grin that’s building on his face and that looks so familiar and so goddamn real that for a moment it feels like nothing’s changed at all. 

Charlie rushes towards him into a hug and it feels like nothing’s changed at all. 

He pulls away after a moment, and Charlie says “It’s unfortu- _nate_ that we couldn’t meet sooner,” and Nate laughs, and it feels like nothing’s changed all.

“How long have you been saving up that pun?”

“A while.” He chuckles. They both laugh, and it’s real.

But then a voice calls “Slime! We're on a schedule, hurry up!” and he flinches and they’re thrust back into the present again. 

Charlie looks to the other end of the corridor, then back to Nate, his hand flying up to fiddle with something around his neck. The string is familiar. 

He’s still wearing it. After all this time. 

“I’m so happy you’re safe,” he says, and the relief and regret in his voice is palpable. “Tell the others I said hi, okay?”

“I will.” Nate can’t let himself cry now. This isn’t nearly enough. It’s so much better than nothing, and it’s not nearly enough. “Good luck, Charlie. I’ll see you around.” It comes out sounding like a question. 

Charlie smiles, and it’s genuine, and Nate can only smile back.

“Yeah. I will.” That sounds like a promise.

And just like that, Charlie disappears again. 

But even as Nate watches the train leave, he knows that he’ll never truly be gone.

**Author's Note:**

> (YES I will continue to work on STRT I promise)


End file.
